"Global Shakespeares in World Markets and Archives: An Introduction to the Special Issue." Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 11.1 (2017) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Digital Shakespeare: Towards a Global Cultural Memory
Using the digital technology (ICT) in remediating Shakespeare’s plays from various media of production and dissemination into digital media draws a continuous negotiation and redefinition of what we call cultural memory. The dynamics within cultural memory, which is, according to Aleida Assmann (2008), always situated between two forms of preserving the past, namely keeping the past as present, or as canon, and keeping the past as past, or the archive, make the field extremely accelerated and decentered once the global process of digitizing culture kicks in. In the present paper we will discuss the implications of digitizing Shakespearean archives by institutions such as the British Library, MIT and Folger Shakespeare Library, on what is designated as the Shakespearean cultural memory. What type of material artifacts are of interest for the digital Shakespearian canon? What is the status of translations and adaptations within it? And to what extent can we discuss about a global cultural memory, following the openness of the new media and the transnational approaches in Shakespeare Studies?
Shakespeare, 2013
Having reached a critical mass of participants, performances and the study of Shakespeare in different cultural contexts are changing how we think about globalization. The idea of global Shakespeares has caught on because of site-specific imaginations involving early modern and modern Globe theatres that aspired to perform the globe. Seeing global Shakespeares as a methodology rather than as appendages of colonialism, as political rhetorics, or as centerpieces in a display of exotic cultures situates us in a postnational space that is defined by fluid cultural locations rather than by nation-states. This framework helps us confront archival silences in the record of globalization, understand the spectral quality of citations of Shakespeare and mobile artworks, and reframe the debate about cultural exchange. Global Shakespeares as a field registers the shifting locus of anxiety between cultural particularity and universality. This article explores the promise and perils of political articulations of cultural difference and suggests new approaches to performances in marginalized or polyglot spaces.
Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare , 2022
Shakespeare adaptations share an intimate relation with global studies, because Shakespeare – as a cultural institution – registers a broad spectrum of practices that generate productive dialogues with world cultures. Global studies enables us to examine deceivingly harmonious images of Shakespeare’s works. This paper examines culturally fluid, contemporary adaptations in relation to digital cultures. Mining rhizomatic and non-linear flows of tropes, my approach evaluates the connections among Saudi, Bollywood, and French New Wave films. ::::: The second part of this paper traces global Shakespeares during the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020. While the global pandemic closed live theatre events and cinemas worldwide, it also ushered in a new phase of globalization fuelled by on-demand digital videos as at-home audiences took to streaming to engage with Shakespeare. In tandem with the spread of coronavirus, there is a global viral spread of Shakespeare that carries site-specific meanings with them in disembodied forms. ::::: Delineating the relations between Shakespeare and global studies in adaptations and in digital culture, this paper outlines the future challenges and opportunities for the fields. ::::: Résumés francais : Les adaptations de Shakespeare entretiennent un lien privilégié avec les études de la mondialisation, car Shakespeare, en tant qu’institution culturelle, recouvre un large éventail de pratiques qui génèrent des dialogues productifs avec les cultures du monde. Les études mondiales nous permettent d’examiner une certaine image, trop simpliste, des œuvres de Shakespeare. Grâce aux méthodologies rhizomatiques de Deleuze et Guattari, cet article analyse les adaptations contemporaines et les met en vis-à-vis avec les cultures numériques. En explorant les connexions non linéaires entre les cultures, mon approche approfondit les liens entre les films saoudiens, les films bollywoodiens et les films français de la Nouvelle Vague. La deuxième partie de cet article parcourt les adaptations internationales de Shakespeare durant l'épidémie de COVID-19 au début de l'année 2020. Alors que la pandémie a conduit à la fermeture des salles de cinéma et l’arrêt des représentations théâtrales non virtuelles dans le monde entier, elle a également inauguré une nouvelle phase de mondialisation alimentée par un circuit de vidéos à la demande, que les spectateurs ont adopté afin d’entretenir leur passion pour Shakespeare. Parallèlement à la propagation du coronavirus, on a pu observer une propagation virale mondiale de Shakespeare à travers des flux numériques qui apportent un nouveau sens en dépit d’une forme désincarnée. En juxtaposant les contextes culturels et la portée locale de trois films avec l’émergence de significations numériques inédites, cet article décrit les futurs défis et opportunités qui se profilent pour Shakespeare et les études de la mondialisation. ::::: https://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/7040
Société Française Shakespeare, 2021
Register by emailing: contact@societefrancaiseshakespeare.org ::::::: Shakespeare adaptations share an intimate relation with global studies, because Shakespeare—as a cultural institution—registers a broad spectrum of values and practices that generate productive dialogues with humanistic disciplines. Global studies enables us to examine deceivingly harmonious images of Shakespeare. This paper deploys Deleuze and Guatarri’s rhizomatic methodologies for interdisciplinary inquiries into culturally fluid, contemporary adaptations in relation to digital cultures. Mining rhizomatic and non-linear flows of tropes, my approach reevaluates the perceived lack of connections among Saudi, Bollywood, and French New Wave films. The second part of this paper traces global Shakespeares during and after the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020. While the global pandemic closed live theatre events and cinemas worldwide, it also ushered in a new phase of globalization fuelled by digital videos as at-home audiences took to streaming to engage with Shakespeare. In tandem with the spread of coronavirus, there is a global viral spread of Shakespeare via digital videos that carry site-specific meanings with them in disembodied forms. In juxtaposing the ways in which localities create site-specific meanings in the three films, and the ways in which cultural meanings are reframed through ever-evolving forms of digital engagement, this paper outlines the future challenges and opportunities for Shakespeare and global studies.
The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Shakespeare, 2021
Shakespeare’s works and Shakespeare as a cultural figure have been closely associated with world cultures. The history of global performance dates back to the late sixteenth century when Shakespeare’s plays began to be performed in continental Europe during his lifetime. The word “global” in global Shakespeare does double duty: it is an attributive genitive naming the stakeholder and playwright of the Globe Theatre, and it is a descriptive adjective signaling the influence and significance of that theater and of Shakespeare. Shakespeare has become both an author of the Globe and a playwright of global stature. One reason for Shakespeare’s global reach is the oeuvre’s ability to allow audiences to project various values onto the open narrative structure. The illusion that Shakespeare seems to be universal lies in the fact that Shakespeare’s narratives are flexible and can blend into other cultures. ::::: https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-3-319-99378-2
ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies, 2011
“Alexa Alice Joubin and Charles Ross’s [book] is a pioneering, erudite and fascinating work which aims to understand the complex relations between Shakespeare, Hollywood, Asia and the digital age.” “One of the book’s greatest virtues is the considerable number of cultural products it analyses: film adaptations, stage productions in the Asian continent and even on-line video games such as the Arden game.” “For Joubin, Shakespeare in Hollywood, Asia, and Cyberspace brings to a spectacular close her wideranging research on the subject of Shakespeare in Asia. Her article ‘Asian Shakespeares in Europe: From the Unfamiliar to the Defamiliarised’ (2008), her co-foundation with Peter Donaldson of two open-access digital video archives, Global Shakespeares in Performance and Shakespeare Performance in Asia, and her special edition of ‘Asian Shakespeares on Screen: Two Films in Perspective’ (2009), which concentrates on The Banquet – a Chinese film based on Macbeth – and Maqbool – an Indian remake of Macbeth – are only some of her contributions to this field. Her co-edited volume with Ross not only attests to the strength of Asian Shakespeare(s), but also shows how the current global trends that dominate the world influence the reception of Shakespeare. The analysis of Shakespeare in cyberspace is timely because it addresses an area of the corpus of Shakespearean scholarship which is still uncharted territory.” “Inspired by questions such as ‘how do the collaborative processes of signification operate as local stagings of Shakespeare and global locales?’, Joubin and Ross begin their collaborative project with the aim of answering them. In the Introduction, the editors are wise to identify the benefit of the impact of the English dramatist in Eastern and Western contemporary culture, instead of bemoaning a possible loss in translation and in the visual medium. The introduction likewise covers the literature review of worldwide appropriation of Shakespeare.”
"Global Shakespeares, Affective Histories, Cultural Memories"
Shakespeare Survey, 2015
If Shakespeare imagined the 'world as a stage', contemporary globalizing trends have further transformed his works into richly peopled worlds of varied cultures and communities. The Renaissance itself, as demonstrated in recent scholarship, is now viewed as a 'Global' Renaissance in which travel, trade and militarism generated complex, though often asymmetrical, economies of exchangecultural, economic, sexual and religious, among others. 1 And within this context, critics are increasingly drawn to historical mediations, charting the Bard's works as they have traversed through varied cultural formations, idioms, languages and contexts. In fact, the plays have become plural and multifarious, moving beyond the page and stage into film and digital formats: thus in the past decade, we have witnessed postcolonial Shakespeare, Chinese Shakespeare, Bollywood Shakespeare, Japanese Shakespeare and, as we discuss here, Kurdish and Kashmiri Shakespeare-all rapidly proliferating into a movement labelled 'Global Shakespeare'. 2 In its overarching aim, this article examines how the intercultural imperative of Shakespearian dissemination is both global-in extending its reach to yet newer parts of the world-and local, in the sense of attending more closely to indigenous, native cultures and geo-politics. More specifically, our interest lies in exploring the affective possibilities of a global Shakespeare as a trans-historical brand-becoming 'native' to other cultures, while dramatizing affective histories and cultural memories in voices and agents that exceed the canonical 1 Among recent studies on the global early modernity, see Jyotsna G. Singh, 'Introduction', in
Shakespeare and Cultural Appropriation, 2023
Cultural appropriation can be an exploitative act but need not be; it all depends on what users do with Shakespeare. Due to the unequal status of the parties engaged in appropriative exchange, some appropriations deploy Shakespeare to protect conventional power structures. Appropriations are rarely negotiated on a level playing field, especially when it comes to Shakespeare, because of the canon’s long history of association with cultural elites and prestige. Cultural appropriation can also have subversive and counter-hegemonic effects. Marginalized agents have the power to expose and correct power imbalances. In other words, we addresses a wide range of intercultural and global appropriations of Shakespeare. Our study also complicates any simple definition of how cultural appropriation works and what ethical effects it might produce. ::: ISBN 9781032303086
Digital Shakespeares from the Global South, 2022
This is a review of Alexa Alice Joubin and Peter S. Donaldson's MIT Global Shakespeares. In 2022, Professor Amrita Sen writes that the MIT Global Shakespeares “opens up new possibilities of community building through its curatorial strategies and social outreach. It not only acts as repositories of actual performances, but also functions as archives of communal memories. Through bi-lingual records of social media exchanges and transcriptions of performances, the archive opens up new possibilities of accessing and reading Latin American Shakespeares.” :::: This assessment is part of Professor Sen’s chapter, entitled “Practicing Digital Shakespeare in Latin America,” in her edited book, Digital Shakespeares from the Global South (2022), pp. 57-72.